Tell us what you think of our library services!

We want our students to have a great experience during their time at Cranfield. Each month, the University runs a short “Topic of the month” survey to focus on one service or facility and find out what you think of it. This month it is our turn!

If you are a current student, please take a few minutes to complete the survey and tell us what you think of our library services and spaces. You can select the library you use the most – Kings Norton Library, the Management Information and Resource Centre (MIRC) or the Barrington Library. All your comments will be considered carefully to help improve the quality and usefulness of the services we offer. We are starting to think about redesigning our library spaces and your feedback will really shape our plans. One lucky student will also win a £50 Amazon gift card for taking part!

As a result of the feedback we received last year, we have made a number of changes to make your life easier:

• Opening hours – You asked for us to increase our opening hours. We have been able to reintroduce our pre-pandemic opening hours in the Kings Norton Library and Barrington Library (24/7 in Kings Norton Library, and 8am-7pm Monday to Friday in Barrington Library). We have also extended MIRC opening hours to 10am – 4pm,  Monday to Friday.
• Searching – You said that you sometimes found it difficult to locate specific items in the Library collections in Library Search. We are continually trying to improve the discovery of items in our collection. Several new developments to aid discovery are currently being considered.
• eBooks – You said we should have more! We have invested heavily in eBooks over the last two years, particularly in titles on reading lists.
• Reference books – You felt we had too many reference only print books. We are undertaking a review of our of print book collection in the Kings Norton Library which will include revising/reducing the number of reference titles.
• Journals and databases – You asked if we could expand the range of journals and databases we take. Whilst we are limited by budget we are always open to suggestions for new subscriptions. You can also use our interlibrary loan service to borrow items from other libraries if we don’t have them in our own collection. We are also currently investigating how we can include more high quality open access journals and books into Library Search.
• Study space – There were a few comments about the study space in the Kings Norton Library. We will be reopening more of the existing study spaces after Easter. We are also starting to gather more feedback to help us develop library space in the future and have added some questions to this year’s survey so we can hear your thoughts on this topic.
• Noise – You said that the Kings Norton Library could be too noisy. We encourage you to let us know whenever you are disturbed by noise, so we can intervene. We have also restarted our text service where you can report noise issues anonymously, if you want to be more discrete.

Complete the survey and tell us what you think!

Image from Pixabay